Maintaining a healthy and happy relationship can be challenging at times. Life may throw curveballs that throw you and your spouse off of the easy path and straight into the unknown.
Couples therapy is one tool that you may consider to get your marriage back on the right foot. How effective is this type of resource? While couples therapy can lead to building stronger bonds in a troubled marriage, it can also lead the parties to decide to separate. Explore what makes this type of counseling work and what may cause it to fail.
Focus on the Emotional Component
For years, the most successful marriage counselors have implemented a shift away from topics to emotions. Couples are encouraged to share feelings and work through them versus dealing only with behaviors. Couples who find the most success are willing to share openly the good and the bad that drives them to feel one way or the other. Emotional vulnerability and transparency between spouses is key to the success of this type of therapy. During the process, couples learn how to express themselves using feelings rather than judgment or harsh verbiage. Therapists who deal with married couples also work hard to get to any underlying causes of the rift between them.
Make Changes To Help the Marriage
Those couples who get through counseling and find it to be a positive experience often put in quite a bit of effort. One thing that may help chart a successful course for a couple is their willingness to make significant changes. When things come out in therapy that need addressing, the couples who rise to the challenge are the ones who find the experience positive and rewarding. This may mean that each person gets individual counseling to help them reset their thinking or deal with personal issues that are damaging their marriage.
There Are Limits
Couples who complain the most about the ineffectiveness of couples counseling are usually those where one is unwilling to work. Many times, these marriages are wrought with verbal, emotional or physical abuse. When one partner refuses to make changes to help the other or to attend sessions with an open mind, the consequences may spell disaster for the family unit. A couple cannot rise above abuse if the abusive one does not stop the behavior. Thus, those couples who do not make it have at least one person who will not do what they must for the good of the union.
The amount of work you put into your marriage will dictate how successful it is. The same applies to the effectiveness of couples therapy. A therapist in Palatine, IL may show you the way, but you have to walk it.
Thanks to Lotus Wellness Center for their insight into wellness and health.
